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THE ability to hear plays such a crucial role in making music that it’s almost impossible to imagine how a professional musician feels when they’ve been diagnosed with a condition called otosclerosis, or progressive deafness. “I’m in good company, apparently,” says the flautist Elizabeth Petcu with a wry smile. “Beethoven is thought to have had it as well.”

Yes, but Beethoven was famously cranky and difficult. Petcu, on the other hand, has always been calm, generous and quietly humorous, a graceful presence in the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, where she played for more than 25 years, many of those as principal flautist.